1-Bowl Vegan Banana Nut Muffins (GF)

My very favorite kind of muffin on the planet is banana walnut. Always has been, (likely) always will be. The only flavor that comes close is Double Chocolate Chip (which I’m officially adding to my gluten-free experimentation list!)

Add almond meal, gluten-free flour blend, and oats and stir until just combined. Then divide batter between muffin tins, filling all the way full - there should be 12 muffins (amount as original recipe is written // adjust if altering batch size).

Top with walnuts (optional). In place of walnuts, you can also substitute more rolled oats and/or a sprinkle of organic cane sugar.

Bake for 28-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean and the edges are dark golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Then remove from tin and let cool completely on a cooling rack. The wrappers peel away easier and the muffin texture is best when completely cooled.

Serve with vegan butter, nut butter, or as is. Store leftovers in a covered container for up to 4 days or in the freezer up to 1 month.

Just made the 1-bowl apple & carrot muffin recipe last week and this week I made this one. Loving the 1-bowl recipes. I freeze bananas before they go bad and gladly defrosted a couple for this recipe. No regrets. Perfectly tender and just the right amount of nuts. My anti-vegan family members loved it and were shocked at how something so good didn’t have eggs or butter. A++!

This has become my go-to basic muffin recipe. In fact, I regularly make up 3 batches of all the dry ingredients, including the flax, in ziploc bags and keep them in the fridge for quick muffin making. I’ve subbed the bananas with 1 1/2 cups of applesauce with success, and added various mix-ins for different flavors. *Orange juice instead of water+orange zest+chopped cranberries instead of walnuts
*Lemon zest+blueberries+walnuts
*1 chopped apple+extra cinnamon+walnuts
*shredded carrots+chopped apple+currants+walnuts
They’ve all come out well:) Because of my prepped kits, we can have muffins in under an hour. Thanks for a great base recipe!

Delicious! I followed the recipe and added 1/2 almond extract, fresh blueberries, and 5 tablespoons of Bulletproof collagen. They taste great – the blueberries really add a nice zing. They are rose more than any gluten free muffin I’ve ever baked!

Wish I could share a photo because these turned out great!! I doubled the recipe and used half all purpose half whole wheat flour instead of the GF blend. I made almond meal by simply grinding whole almonds in my coffee grinder. I also added 1/3 cup of applesauce as per others’ recommendations but I honestly don’t think the recipe needed it. Lastly, for the topping I tossed the walnuts in a little vegan butter and maple syrup for extraaa yumminess! Will definitely make again :)

One of the best recipes for gluten free vegan – ANYTHING – I’ve found in a while! I doubled the cinnamon and vanilla. Loved that but still thought the muffins were slightly grainy (likely from the coconut sugar) and dry. I think I’ll try doing 3tbs oil and 2tbs apple sauce next time to see if that does the trick. Great recipe though!

Great recipe! I find that the coconut sugar doesn’t dissolve like cane sugar so you definitely want to do the mix of cane brown sugar with th coconut. The all over texture for me was a little grainy and just a tad dry. I’m thinking of doing 2tbs apple sauce to 2tbs oil next time to see if that yields a more desireable result. But over all, GREAT recipe! One of the best I’ve seen in a while!

** I also doubled the cinnamon and vanilla. Gluten free flours (to me) don’t spice the same as others. I tend to add more. I thought it was great!

We think that would turn out too oily. If you are trying to avoid oats, you might be able to increase the almond meal and gluten-free flour blend and use a little bit of shredded coconut. But we haven’t tried that and can’t guarantee results! If you give it a try, let us know how it goes!

Hi Sophia, we haven’t tried this recipe with other gluten free flours, but think it could potentially work if you get the right combo! The comments section of our DIY Gluten Free Flour Blend post has some suggestions of flour blends other readers have used.

Really wonderful to make a recipe and have it turn out! So many recipes online these days I think many are never tested accurately. This one is AWESOME. I’m able to sub different dry ingredients (nut meals etc.) and it still turns out like it should. Muffins that are golden, moist, risen!!! and delicious. Thank you!

Thanks so much for the sweet note and lovely review, Katherine. We are so glad you enjoyed these! Next time, would you mind leaving a rating with your review? It’s super helpful for us and other readers. Thanks so much! xo

I would like to make the banana nut muffin recipe NON-GF. Can you please share the amount of flour using unbleached flour and almond meal (50/50 ratio) or whole wheat pastry flour? I’ve never used GF flour so I am not sure if I can just swap out another flour from your original recipe.

My husband requests these muffins for his lunches during the week. I had about 3 Tbsp or so of HeMp protein powder for an extra boost and sometimes I add fresh blueberries when they’re on sale.
Thank you for this recipe! They’re the most moist, fluffy puffin muffins ever, and so delectable.
When they come out if the oven, I slather them with coconut oil.

SO good! This is my third batch! I use a real egg because I’m not vegan, and no nuts because I have toddlers who aren’t the best chewers LOL – but everything else as written! Even my husband raved about them, and he normally won’t eat anything I make that’s gluten-free.

These have the perfect texture – not too spongy like the keto recipes and not too dense like the gluten-free ones. They’re awesome! I can’t thank you enough :)

These are my go to muffins and I alternate adding walnuts or chocolate chips! I doubled this recipe for 24 and ended up making 36! And they cooked faster! I did everything exactly to the recipe so I don’t know what happened but they came out delicious!

I just finished making these muffins with my 2 year old! Popped them in the oven, gave her a bath and now we are sharing one, and they are soooo good! The is seriously the best gluten free and vegan muffin recipe I have found yet! I didn’t have almond meal, so we used almond flour, we cut down on both sugars and we sprinkled hemp seeds on top instead of walnuts. Such a yummy treat! So fun to share my love of baking with my little Rosa!

I used a mix of all purpose flour and the oats- worked perfectly! I used coconut oil because we didn’t have olive oil on hand and it didn’t seize up. I would suggest warming up the almond milk and the maple syrup in a separate (small bowl) before adding the melted coconut oil. I also used 2 large ripe bananas instead of 3 medium sized ones and an egg instead of a flax egg. The muffins were completely cooked by 24 minutes. Thanks for the great recipe!

it is amazing simple and delusions muffin, I made it without sugar. I supp ( coconut sugar and brown sugar and maple syrup) to 150 g pitied dates. buzz the date with GF flour at food processor to cut the dates small and the result was so so good. thank you for the recipe.

I made these muffins a few days ago, and they are super yummy, as is! I followed the recipe exactly, baking them for about 33 minutes. I am gluten free and vegan, which makes it very challenging to bake without things turning out too soggy, but these were just right. Even my non-GF, omnivore husband texted me to let me know how good they were after he had tried some! Thank you for sharing this!

Delicious and such good texture!! Made these for my son’s bday snack at school so needed to be gluten and dairy free which I don’t have a lot of experience with and these were perfect. Easy, my 10 year old helped, I’ll definitely make again…probably will use less sugar next time but that’s just me:)

Hi! I try to be as vegan as possible, but have some friends that provide me with happy eggs from time to time. What is the substitution ration from flax egg to regular egg? I’d love to try a ton of your recipes!!

These turned out absolutely amazing! By far the best GF & V muffin recipe i’ve found. Eating a mostly gluten free and vegan diet, i’ve been looking for a morning muffin recipe that I can freeze. This was perfect. Like others have mentioned, I left out about half of the sugar and found them to be very sweet with the 1/4 c sugar and 2 tbs maple syrup + bananas. I can’t wait to check out some of your other recipes! Thanks :)

I’m planning on making these muffins with the little one I nanny and am curious if I could sub another type of flour for the gluten-free flour mix? We are trying to simplify as much as we can (since he is 2, but loves to bake) and are not trying to avoid gluten. Thanks!

Just ate one of these fresh from the oven. Very oaty, nutty, and dense while still being fluffy?!

Used 1 real egg, didn’t have vanilla so left it out, added a dash of all spice, 1/8 cup shredded coconut, used 1 cup almond meal, 1/4 cup buckwheat flour, and 1 1/4 cups rice flour, and left out the cane sugar. Some dark chocolate chips would be nice next time.

I have a convection oven so they cooked at 190 celsius in about 10 min.!!

I’ve made these several times. I make them just as the recipe describes except if the bananas I get are a bit smaller I will use 4 bananas instead of 3. I’m allergic to walnuts so I substituted pecans. They are super delicious and moist. My favorite muffin recipe.

I love this recipe because it’s a hearty muffin I give to my kids. I do only put in 1/4 cup of sugar because it’s all we think it really needs. I do add 1/2 cup of vegan chocolate chips and that adds sugar but sometimes I omit the chips and its still sweet enough with the added sugar from the ripe bananas. Overall, it’s my go to recipe for banana muffins!

Hello! Hearing lots of positive things about Minimalist Baker I ventured to try this recipe even though it calls for a lot more ingredients than the usual vegan banana bread/muffin recipe. I confess I subbed AP flour for the GF flour as I didn’t have any, any chia instead of flax. Muffins turned out holey and a little more bread-like I’m guessing because of the flour, and reduced oil. I love how this recipe is really wholesome and healthy. Wondering if there’s any way to increase the banana flavor? More bananas but reduce the non-dairy milk? My mom didn’t quite like the oats which remained a little tough. I’d consider soaking them for a bit in the liquid ingredients first just so they blend a bit more seemlessly into the whole muffin. Good recipe though, particularly loved the walnuts ?

Dana these muffins are fabulous! I have been making the weekly for a few months and just love them. I have totally eliminated the brown sugar and they are still perfectly sweet! What I am wondering is if you have use this recipe as a base for other muffins? I wanted to try using this but making it like a carrot cake muffin with carrots, raisins etc – but don’t want the banana to over power … any suggestions on what I might change but keeping this relatively the same? Do you think I could take down the banana to 2 and this all still work adding in other dry ingredients although carrots have alot of water in them?

Thank you! These were Soo good. I had several non vegans telling me it’s one of the best muffins they ever had. I topped them with almond butter and used 1/2 cup of coconut sugar instead of the brown sugar and I think next time I can add less sugar and more maple syrup.

I made this with added wild blueberries and a touch of almond butter on top (about a teaspoon per muffin) instead of the 1 cup of pecan nuts and it’s CRAZY GOOD! I was looking for a good, sweet and satisfying muffin recipe that would still be nutritions and this is it : sooooo delicious and yet packed with a ton of nutriments! It’s a win-win, even my non-vegan family and friends liked it :)

Delicious muffins! Very tasty, moist and flavourful! I never use the flour combinations as I have no problems with gluten so it works well with whole meal spelt, I ran out of almond meal and subbed about half of it with white spelt for fun. Very nice recipe and great for kids lunches! I accidentally went ahead and added coconut oil without thinking- don’t make this mistake especially when using frozen bananas from the freezer I had to heat the milk and stir and stir and stir to get the clumps of frozen oil liquid again! Will remember this for next time!

Made this, this morning as had lots of overripe bananas! Delicious, thank you for sharing!! A few subs, I used 2 eggs rather than flaxseed as i do eat eggs, i reduced the brown sugar to half the recommended quanity, but i think i could take it out all together next time, and did half rice malt syrup half maple to reduce fructose consumption further. But then I added in 1/2 cup Dark Choc nibs as I’m craving choc! Finally, I mixed the pecans in the mix as well as on top. They came out perfect, so tasty! Thanks so much again!

These were fantastic! I opted for a vegan but not gluten-free version of these since I did not have all of the ingredients at home. I used neat egg mix for the egg, and I replaced the almond meal with a mixture of 1/2 almond flour and 1/2 whole wheat flour. I also used all-purpose flour rather than the gluten free flour mix. They turned out delicious and I cannot wait to make them again!

Fantastic recipe, Dana! Chose to try this to accommodate all dietary restrictions and choices in our family for Thanksgiving which makes the combination vegan, gluten-free, soy-free. In order to avoid a trip to the store, I subbed some ingredients for ones I had on hand already and I think it turned out perfectly, roommate and family loved them :) Subbed coconut sugar for brown sugar. Subbed water for dairy-free milk. Subbed brown rice flour for GF flour blend. Subbed half ground almonds and half of leftover filtered out remnants from home-made almond milk for the almond meal. Topped the muffins with crushed pecans and coconut sugar for some crunch.

Hi! I’ve just made there and they came out great! My substutitions were: demerara sugar for the organic cane sugar; sub mascavado sugar for the brown sugar, honey for the maple. And I also used quinoa flakes (half cup) instead of the oats cause I’m coeliac and can’t have oats, even the gluten free ones. In the end I forgot to add the nuts, which I got very upset for, but they’re good anyway.My husband who does’t like banana in any baked good liked these! Thank you for the recipe!

Thanks for another awesome recipe. I’ve made these both as listed and with a regular flour sub for the gf. I prefer the original gf because they seem lighter and less dense. Now our favourite banana muffins!

Hi! Almond flour is often much more finely ground than almond meal is and has a more uniform consistency. Almond meal can be blanched (skins removed) or unblanched, while most products labeled almond flour are blanched. Hope this helps!

These were really good!! I didn’t have gf flour or almond meal (moving soon, trying to clear the cupboard out!) so I used all whole wheat flour. With that sub, I used just under 2 cups of it total with otherwise the same amount of all the other wet ingredients. I also added chocolate chips because I just couldn’t help myself.

my sister n law made them straight off ur websit for my daughter and I whilst we were on a road trip up east coast as we are vegan. They were sensational and although they vacuumed sealed the last few to last til later in trip they were all gone the following day! Thankyou so much for taking the time and effort to share ur beautiful food with us all. It is certainly most appreciated.
When I make them i will lower oil a bit and add and extra banana.

I made these tonight and they were AMAZING!! So glad I tripled the batch! They are gonna disappear quickly!! Thanks for sharing! I’ve made quite a few of your recipes and I haven’t been disappointed yet!! Thanks! :)

These turned out great! I used all-purpose flour instead of GF flour, and used only almond flour in place of half almond flour/almond meal. I also only used 1/2 cup walnuts so I could do 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips. Will definitely make again!

I omitted the maple syrup and used all almond flour (1 and 1/4 cups) bc I didn’t have almond meal. Great taste, not too sweet, and great for topping with sunflower or nut butter! My husband did not like the oats in there, however, due to the more chewy consistency…perhaps the oats could be ground up if making these for kiddos or more picky eaters. I topped them with chopped walnuts before baking, next time will try vegan choc chips also! Thanks for the recipe, I’m a huge fan of anything one-bowl. :]

These worked out great for me to use up some over ripe bananas, not too sweet and a nice moist fluffy texture. I used normal flour instead of gluten free but otherwise followed the recipe. Thanks Dana, despite having been a reasonably accomplished baker prior to going vegan a few years ago I still really struggle to get inspired to bake because I find the results very hit and miss. I appreciate you sharing your expertise :)

Literally just pulled these out of the oven. The smell… I’m drooling already! The only issue I have is that walnuts have gone all dry/nearly burnt. Next time will probably squeeze them into the batter rather than leave them sprinkled on top like I just did. Can’t wait to eat them. They rose wonderfully!

Wonderful recipe – I suspect it doesn’t matter much, but are you adding the nuts into the batter at a certain step?
Also – in general I like to cut back on the sugar in recipes. I have done that with most of yours fairly successfully, like leaving out the maple syrup in the Chocolate Chocolate Chip muffins (which are out of this world, by the way!).
I’m always a bit concerned that my consistency is going to be off – so in this recipe, would it be better to used the two granulated sugars, but just less of them (keeping the maple syrup), or reducing the granulated sugar and getting rid of the maple syrup?
Thanks for any sugar reduction suggestions!

Okay – I went ahead and made them because I couldn’t stop thinking about biting into one!
They are wonderful.
I cut out both of the granulated sugars, only using the maple syrup, and they are the perfect amount of sweet for me!

I’ve been regularly making gluten-free, vegan banana muffins lately and just made these today. I used walnut oil and Bobs Red Mill GF all purpose flour as well as Bobs Red Mill Almond Flour for all the meal/flour. They are excellent….the perfect “muffin-top” with toasty walnuts. Next time I’ll add chocolate chips.
Cynthia-pumpkin seeds and choc chips…yum!

Fantastic recipe…made them on Valentine morning for our guests at breakfast. An absolute hit! One guest had four of them saying they were so good he just couldn’t help himself! My husband loved them as well and we shared a couple with our friend who’s a chef and he said they were absolutely delicious. Definitely a keeper for the recipe file. Thanks for sharing :-)

I Have recently been diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis and because of this certain foods trigger my inflammation I experience. i love this recipe but what can i use to substitute the oatmeal? I try to also use lots of almond flour, coconut flour, and try not to do many grains. Can you make a recipe to accommodate this one day. :)

Hi Dana, I’m not vegan or gluten-free but love your recipes! For this Banana Muffin recipe, I don’t have almond meal or almond flour but do have gluten free flour-can I just double? If I can, then why almond at all-does it give a better flavor? Also, when you use Maple Syrup, is it pure? Is there a brand at the grocery you recommend? Not a maple syrup person….

Hello. I tried your recipe and it was a fail. I added 2 &a half cups of flour and 1 & 1/4 cups of oats and the batter was supper thick. Did I add too much flour? The recipes says 1 1/4 cups so does that mean just a quarter cup of flour or 1 cup plus a quarter? I’m confused because the grams listed are all different yet still says 1 1/4 cups.

Hi Roxana,
If the recipe calls for 1 1/4 cup of flour, that means 1 (whole) cup + 1/4 of a cup.
To my knowledge, the difference in grams just has to do with the difference in density of varying products. You can have 1 cup of one product and 1 cup of another product that differ in grams, but it still is 1 cup of each.

I think that she didn’t have almond flour, so she used twice the GF blend instead. It’s true that the recipe calls for 3.75 total cups of dry ingredients (Gf flour, almond flour and oats). I just did the same thing and it’s clear that that’s too much flour. Maybe it’s because GF flour absorbs a lot more liquid than almond flour, though almost 4 cups of dry ingredients for 12 muffins is a lot more than any other muffin recipe I’ve seen. In any event, I just didn’t add all the dry – I used my judgment to get to the right consistency for the batter, and it perfectly made 12 muffins (I would guess I ended up using about 3 cups of dry total).

This turned out SO WELL! These muffins are so moist, I was honestly astonished. Like made in a lab moist! I substituted a chia seed egg for a flax seed egg (1 TBS ground chia seeds and 2 1/2 TBE of water) and topped with pecans. I was not disappointed! Even my dairy loving, can’t live without animal bi products fiancée LOVED them. This will become a staple! Thanks for sharing and I can’t wait to try more of your recipes!!!

So I was super excited to make this beauties since I don’t indulge in bake goods much…But today I did. And out of 16 muffins, one lone muff is left. I altered the sugars by only using Truvia and 1 tbsp honey, and then used an egg instead of the flax egg. For clarification purposes, I did NOT eat all of them, minus the lone one. My boys did and loved them. Score. BUT, I ate a lot. Of. Them. Time to go for a run…sheesh.

Hi Dana, I am very confused by the whole ‘GF oats’ issue. I have trouble finding these anywhere and have been told by a GF specialist shop there is no such thing as GF oats, but have been told that celiac’s can often eat normal oats without an issue but if you look at the box it says ‘contains gluten’. Please help as I am extremely confused as to where to buy GF oats.

Oats are gluten free but they are often grown with or near wheat, and processed in the same facility as wheat. Bobs Red Mill has gluten free oats (look on the label for gluten free) and I can find them at my local grocery store. I usually order my gluten free oats from vitacost.com. Hope that helps!

Just made a batch of these! They are SO good! I did not have almond meal, only almond flour, but I added a scoop of Bob’s Red Mill vanilla protein powder to the recipe and they turned out so great! I am not sure if this made up the difference for the almond meal, but it was the only thing I could think of to substitute!

I made these muffins this morning. My only substitutions: I didn’t have regular sugar, so I used light brown sugar and I ran out of cinnamon so I used a pumpkin spice mix. I thought blending the bananas was a good idea and then worried when I saw how liquidy they got. The muffins still came out great. Just sweet enough, packed with protein and works with my family’s allergies. I topped mine with chocolate chips and pumpkin seeds – yum.

I did not have unbleached paper muffin liners, so used the color paper muffin liners I had on hand. I would emphasize: WAIT until you eat your muffins if you don’t want half of it to end up on the paper. But once completely cooled (as in *at least* 2 hours), there’s no problem.

I made these this morning and they’re a new fav for sure. My kids loved them too. I improvised a little – I added a few tablespoons of coconut (because coconut & banana belong together!) omitted the coconut sugar and used a combo of oat flour and chickpea flour for the gluten free flour blend and used all almond flour (Costco brand) and they still turned out amazing.

I made these as listed, but I added some frozen fresh whole cranberries. I don’t like my muffins too sweet, and with the brown sugar and maple syrup I was afraid they would be and the cranberries would be a nice tart addition. First of all they are sweet, but not too sweet…they are absolutely amazing and I am so glad it made 12 nice size muffins, because well I may have to go have another one now………..

Saw the recipe a few hours ago and made them just now due to a bit of insomnia (it was 4am here in the UK). And OMG they are amazing! I substituted the almond meal with plain wholegrain flour and used 40ml of aquafaba instead of the flaxseed egg. I think they came out pretty well :) Absolutely love them!

hi dana- i was wondering why you chose grapeseed oil here rather than coconout (like in the bread version of the recipe.) Does it make a difference for flavor or texture? Just curious about the recipe testing :) Can’t wait to make these! ( I’ve been making muffins from your one bowl banana bread recipe almost weekly since you posted it…)

Hi Julia! Either will work. Sometimes coconut oil seizes up when other cold ingredients are added (like almond milk). So I chose grapeseed or avocado oil here. But melted coconut oil should work! Good question.

You have wonderful recipes, but many are un-usable for me. Like lots of old people with heart disease, I avoid oil or other added fat. I wonder whether one couldn’t make these with something other than oil–applesauce maybe?

Thats just not true. We would literally die without oils in our diet.
Many vitamins are obtained solely in oils. Our hair, skin, nails, eyes, and many essential bodily processes require ingestion of oils/lipids.
This is basic nutritional science.